Happy April Fool’s Day!

As probably know, every year on April Fool’s Day, a bunch of websites and technology companies, such as Google, Hulu, Groupon, Spotify, as well as others, come up with jokes and pranks to pull on their users. Below are three of these such pranks, which you may find interesting.

GMail – GMail Motion

If you went to the GMail website today, with the intent of checking your e-mail, you may have noticed that there was a box announcing “GMail Motion”, which enables users to access and navigate around their GMail accounts by making certain gestures and body movements, which would be picked up by their webcam.

Google even created a help page for the “GMail Motion” product, explaining what it is, how it works, which motions will do what within GMail, as well as some other information. Also on this page was a YouTube video, explaining this new feature, which I have posted below.

However, when users go to click on the “Try GMail Motion” button, located near the top right of the help page, a black box appears with a loading bar beneath it. Once the box has reached 100%, it will display a message reading “April Fools! Gmail Motion doesn’t actually exist. At least not yet…” and also offers users to either sign into their GMail accounts or to close the pop-up box.

Groupon – April Fool’s Day Patent

Another interesting April Fool’s Day prank was one that the daily deals website Groupon did, which was claiming that they actually filed for the patent for “April Fool’s Day” and changing the holiday’s name to “Groupon Presents April Fools’ Day™”.

Also, on this page of the Groupon website, it is explained that people will never have to be confused again with another corporation’s April Fool’s Day joke”You’ll never again be confused by other corporations’ April 1 pranks, since Groupon will be taking friendly, but swift, but hostile, legal actions against any nonlicensed April Fools’ Day™ joke.”

Groupon even went as far as to file a “patent” for April Fool’s Day, which you can also find a link to on their April Fool’s Day page.

Also, on some YouTube videos, there is an option to actually make a video look as though it was created in the early 1900’s, by making a video appear as though it is a silent film, with the exception of a piano soundtrack playing along with the video, by making the video appear as though it’s being projected and is in a sepia-like color.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about these three April Fool’s Day pranks that have been pulled on the visitors of GMail, Groupon, and YouTube! For a more complete list of websites and tech companies that have created April Fool’s Day pranks, I’d suggest that you check out this article from TechCrunch, as well as this article from PCMag.com.

What is your opinion of these April Fool’s Day jokes? How do you think they compare to the jokes that were created in the past years? Please feel free to post your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!